Most conventional printing devices cannot be quickly and easily switched over to new applications. For example, typical conventional printing devices may require multiple adjustments and on-site calibration to optimize the quality of the printed output. Often a conventional printing device is optimized for one particular printing application, such as printing photographs, barcodes, or text. By optimizing for one particular printing application, often the printing device is or becomes less than optimal or “suboptimal” in terms of print quality for the other type of printing applications.
Moreover, other conventional printing devices may be configured to handle a wide variety of supplies or applications. Unfortunately in such printing devices the print quality is often less than optimal for all applications due to trade-offs made in the printing device to accommodate a variety of supplies. These other conventional printing devices may also be optimized for printing in a particular environment, such as moderate temperature or humidity, and thus be suboptimally configured when used in different locations or during different seasons of the year when used outside.
Managing a stock of printing supplies for known printing devices can be troublesome as well. For example, maintaining a large stock of paper, tags, cards, labels, wristbands, ribbons, or other supplies, sometimes in multiple stocking locations, is often desirable because it reduces the operational impact of running out. But many of these supplies change over time. For example, some supplies may expire while in storage, especially if exposed to suboptimal environmental conditions, such as humidity or temperature. It is also sometimes desirable to change suppliers of printing supplies for business reasons, e.g., to benefit from different pricing arrangements, delivery or stocking terms, or other supplier-specific capabilities. These changes can also create operational problems for end users with conventional printing devices, because the optimal print settings for the first suppliers' material may not be the same as those for the supplies from an alternate supplier or stock location.
Conventional thermal printers may provide unique or more challenging issues. Many types of thermal printers have attempted to compensate for the variation in print quality by providing many adjustable printer settings. For example, the operator of many thermal printers can adjust the pressure, the distribution of pressure across the printhead, darkness settings, print mode, and print speed. Indeed many thermal printers may prompt the operator for input, via lights and buttons, a front panel, or other computer-human interface terminal, and/or require the operator to adjust one or more mechanical settings. There are also attempts in the prior art to provide closed-loop feedback at the time of printing, by detecting poor print quality and intervening in the printing process by stopping printing, alerting the operator, or making minor adjustments.
Supplies manufacturers have also attempted to compensate for the variation in print quality by controlling the variation in the paper, tags, cards, labels, wristbands, ink or ribbons themselves, or by specifying a narrow set of possible products for use with a narrow range of printers. However, these efforts are sometimes at odds with the requirement for a wide variety of substrates, in many different sizes, for many different applications experienced by some end users.